Your iPhone could not be activated because the activation server is temporary unavailable. Try connecting your iPhone to iTunes to activate it or try again in couple of minutes. If this problem persists, contact Apple Support"

YES IM GETTING THIS ANNOYING MESSAGE LIKE THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE. AND YEAH I HAVE TRIED EVERYTHING AND I MEAN EVERYTHING. BUT I JUST CANT ACTIVATE MY IPHONE 4S! I BOUGHT THE PHONE OFF EBAY, THE DUDE TOLD ME ITS UNLOCKED. IT WAS INITIALLY LOCKED TO AT&T. IM IN JAMAICA, I POPPED IN MY DIGICEL SIMCARD AND THE SIGNAL BAR AND 3G SYMBOL COMES UP, BUT WHEN I TRY TO ACTIVATE THE PHONE I GET THE ANNOYING MESSAGE.
I CONNECT MY PHONE TO ITUNES AND IT TRIES TO CONNECT TO THE ITUNES STORE AND I GET AN ERROR MESSAGE ALSO. I SEE THAT LOTS OF PEOPLE HAVE THIS ISSUE. AND YES I DID CONTACT APPLE AND YES I CONTACTED AT&T, AND YES I DID THE DFU MODE, RECOVERY MODE METHODS ETC ETC. SO IS THEIR ANYTHING LEFT TO DO?? PLEASE BECAUSE IM A SEASONED ANDROID USER BUT RECENTLY SWITCHED AND LOVE IOS AND DONT WANT TO GO BACK AND THIS PISSES ME OFF!!! I MAY HAVE TO SELL MY NEW IPHONE 4S AND GO BACK TO SOME CHEAP ANDROID PLASTIC CRAP.!! SIGH. HELP PLEASE.

Did you contact your carrier or is AT&T your carrier? sorry, if i didn't read that correctly. I would go into whoever your carrier is and see if they can just activate it for you. What did apple & at&t say after you did all that?

Something is maybe blocking the communication between your itunes/iphone and Apples activation servers.
Wether thats a firewall app, antivirus software, router settings etc...
Try restoring it on another computer or connect to another wifi network.
Or maybe whoever sold you the iphone lied and its not unlocked or its faulty or its a cdma 4S.
Who knows, could be many different things, we can only guess.

Hey it seems the bastard lied. The phone is still on contact at at&t. The contract ends November 14 2013!. I called AT&T and the second agent verified this. The first agent I called didn't help at all it seems. But if the phone isn't unlocked why is my digicel simcard being recognized by the iPhone? Also when I check the phones imei status online it says the phone isn't activated or registered. Also the simlock status says SERVER DOWN. When I connect the phone to iTunes and restore it , I did not get a messAge saying Device unlocked , like other people. That's for the quick response guys. Really appreciate it. IM gonna pay the 25dollars and get it factory unlocked tomorrow. Hopefully that will solve the issue. Even tho I see where lots of persons have legitimate factory unlocked devices and they getting the same error as me. Oddly enough my previous iPhone (4) . Gave no such problems. I will keep you guys updated

Hey it seems the bastard lied. The phone is still on contact at at&t. The contract ends November 14 2013!. I called AT&T and the second agent verified this. The first agent I called didn't help at all it seems. But if the phone isn't unlocked why is my digicel simcard being recognized by the iPhone? Also when I check the phones imei status online (013032003461553) it says the phone isn't activated or registered. Also the simlock status says SERVER DOWN. When I connect the phone to iTunes and restore it , I did not get a messAge saying Device unlocked , like other people. That's for the quick response guys. Really appreciate it. IM gonna pay the 25dollars and get it factory unlocked tomorrow. Hopefully that will solve the issue. Even tho I see where lots of persons have legitimate factory unlocked devices and they getting the same error as me. Oddly enough my previous iPhone (4) . Gave no such problems. I will keep you guys updated

You can still get it unlocked even if its locked and under contract still with AT&T.
Search for swift unlocks, pay the $1.99 fee and give them your iphones imei and it will be unlocked within 24hours

You can still get it unlocked even if its locked and under contract still with AT&T.
Search for swift unlocks, pay the $1.99 fee and give them your iphones imei and it will be unlocked within 24hours

It's not that it's not unlocked. If it wasn't unlocked it would tell you the SIM wasn't valid. Seems the phone is just having trouble connecting to the server. Try doing it from another computer or DFU restore.

It's sorted out now so thank you all!!. Really love this phone.oddly enough my friend has a white version and wants to trade me so I'm gonna do it. Want to upgrade to the ip 5 but I heard its delicate and picks up scratches and scuffs way too easily. I may not be the biggest apple fan( closed ecosystem) but hate it or love it apple makes the best phones and has the slickest and best os. Which is all to obvious. Just want some more freedom, and I'm not referring to jail breaking as that always cause problems one way or the other for me. I'm referring to apple, would like themes, more customization options etc. I've already written to them still. And yeah gonna remove imei. Thanks again y'all.

It's not that it's not unlocked. If it wasn't unlocked it would tell you the SIM wasn't valid. Seems the phone is just having trouble connecting to the server. Try doing it from another computer or DFU restore.

True, that's weird behavior if it wont even activate.
But he also contacted AT&T and they looked it up and said its not unlocked.
Interesting to hear what happens.

Quote:

Originally Posted by zantetsuken

It's sorted out now so thank you all!!. Really love this phone.oddly enough my friend has a white version and wants to trade me so I'm gonna do it. Want to upgrade to the ip 5 but I heard its delicate and picks up scratches and scuffs way too easily. I may not be the biggest apple fan( closed ecosystem) but hate it or love it apple makes the best phones and has the slickest and best os. Which is all to obvious. Just want some more freedom, and I'm not referring to jail breaking as that always cause problems one way or the other for me. I'm referring to apple, would like themes, more customization options etc. I've already written to them still. And yeah gonna remove imei. Thanks again y'all.

Nice.
So what happened? It activated all of a sudden and works?
Did you have to get it unlocked?

It's sorted out now so thank you all!!. Really love this phone.oddly enough my friend has a white version and wants to trade me so I'm gonna do it. Want to upgrade to the ip 5 but I heard its delicate and picks up scratches and scuffs way too easily. I may not be the biggest apple fan( closed ecosystem) but hate it or love it apple makes the best phones and has the slickest and best os. Which is all to obvious. Just want some more freedom, and I'm not referring to jail breaking as that always cause problems one way or the other for me. I'm referring to apple, would like themes, more customization options etc. I've already written to them still. And yeah gonna remove imei. Thanks again y'all.

And still the posted IMEI remains, but hey, he's gonna trade with his friend so it's not gonna be his problem, right?

__________________

Experience is what you get when you thought you were getting something else.

Already traded lol I didn't remove the imei post because someone quoted me so it will still be there right??.. I'll remove it anyway. By the way quick question. My friend has an iPhone 4 8gb is running ios 6 but its noticeably laggy especially when browsing the web via safari or chrome. His ios device is jail broken and running all kinds of scripts etc. is this the reason? Or is it simply because of the aging hardware that can't manage newer and more ram hungry ios updates? Which also leads me to another question, why doesn't apple just leave the iPhone 4 on ios 5 and just improve it( similar to windows phone 7.8 which is a lighter version of windows phone 8. I know some stuff was left out of the ios 6 update for iPhone 4....well maybe it's apples way of combating fragmentation. Similar to how about 50percent of android devices are running on gingerbread and some still running on froyo etc. I'm just guessing still.